Kite Caretaker Biologist Holds Unusual Job In The Waste Authority.

March 1, 1987|By NEIL SANTANIELLO, Staff Writer

Already the birds have started to return. In a burst, a flock of white ibis is overhead, winging across the slate-grey sky toward the wilderness rookery.

The flock`s late-afternoon arrival is heralded with a loud, startling whoosh, as the birds, in formation, dive sharply out of the overcast sky toward a strip of tiny island enclaves. Hundreds of other birds, including herons and egrets, roost on the slim branches of Brazilian pepper trees. The endangered Everglade kite, a wading bird like the ibis, also inhabits the rookery, but none is visible.

More birds fly over and land. The scene will be repeated over and over again until dusk, as other flocks return from nearby feeding grounds to their remote home, a rookery on a 1,326-acre-tract west of Riveria Beach.

The land, roughly bounded by Florida`s Turnpike, 45th Street, the West Palm Beach water catchment area and Beeline Highway, is owned by the Palm Beach County Solid Waste Authority.

It is mainly wetland habitat. Other parts are studded with Australian pines, sabal palms and cypress, and pockmarked with small manmade ponds dredged during a shellrock-mining operation.

From a distance, across the water, biologist Darren Rumbold watches the activity in the rookery. He is almost out of sight, standing on the top platform of one of four 14-foot towers erected along the permimeter of the water-encircled rookery. He peers through binoculars from a box-shaped camouflage tent, perched atop the steel structure and occasionally records a few notes on his clipboard.

``I don`t want to get closer and disturb the birds,`` he says. ``That`s the biggest problem I have, restraining myself.``

Rumbold is in an unusual position.

So are the birds.

Not far away, on another part of the isolated tract known to waste authority officials as Site 7, an armada of gigantic yellow earthmovers are clearing land for a $320 million north county garbage-burning power-plant and two landfills. The drone of heavy machinery drifts through the trees.

The noise can be faintly heard at the rookery but does not appear to bother the birds. Even when they fly over the earthmovers on their approach pattern to the rookery, they seem oblivious to the commotion.

It is Rumbold`s job to ensure things remain that way. He is there to make sure that the construction and, later, the garbage-burning plant and Class I and III landfills to be built adjacent to the rookery, do not disturb the estimated 3,000 wading birds that live in the habitat.

Rumbold, 27, is the birdman of the county`s wastelands.

A full-time staff member of the waste authority, Rumbold was hired in December as a combination biologist-bird watcher. The job is unprecedented for the agency.

``It`s an unusual situation,`` said Rumbold, a Florida Atlantic University graduate who holds bachelor`s degrees in both biology and chemistry. In addition to other duties, he records the birds` activity and takes monthly population counts, for which he rises a half-hour before dawn to catch the birds leaving their nests.

Waste authority officials hired Rumbold in December to placate state and federal environmental agencies and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who, after reviewing the project, expressed concern over the co-existence of the incinerator and kites.

Officials at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in July 1985 discovered more than 350 kites -- almost half the species` known population. The kite is a bird whose dietary mainstay is the apple snail, a crustacean, and whose local habitat is believed to be conservation-area wetlands.

``It was kind of a surprise to us`` to find so many kites on the site, said Mark Bruner, head of the waste authority`s environmental division.

Environmental agencies told waste authority planners that necessary permits for the site could only be secured if certain conditions were met, one being that the agency start a seven-year bird-monitoring program. The waste authority also readily agreed to set aside, as a wildlife preserve, the 400- acre section that contains the rookery.

Other conditions to protect the rookery include moving a road and the incinerator on the site. The closest any building will get to the rookery is 1,100 feet.

As bird experts had predicted, however, Site 7 was only a temporary refuge for the kites during a drought period in their normal habitat, the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. The population has since dwindled to the seven Rumbold said he recently recorded there. Those that left could be back if another drought occurred.

The rest of the wading bird population, however, still uses the site, which makes the rookery no less critical a concern, Rumbold said. He has seen a host of birds use the site, including wood storks, anhinga, fish crow, grackle, common gallinule, blue and tricolor herons and marsh hawks. Rumbold records their nesting practices, breeding habits, rookery arrivals and departures and other behavior.